1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to bait cast reels and, more particularly, to a friction drive for a reciprocating line guide on the reel.
2. Background Art
In a conventional bait cast reel, a line-carrying spool is rotated by a crank handle to retrieve line. To assure that the line is evenly distributed across the spool, a line guide, through which the line is passed, reciprocates between side plates bounding a line storage space concurrently with the spool rotation. In one common construction, a crank gear, associated with a shaft driven by the crank handle, drives both a shaft for rotating the spool and a shaft with a worm gear for imparting reciprocating movement to the line guide. The crank gear is in mesh with gears on each of the driven shafts.
While the foregoing arrangement positively drives the line guide, there is one very serious drawback with such a construction. Frequently, a user will get a finger pinched between the moving line guide and the side plates bounding the line storage space.
To avoid this problem, some manufacturers have incorporated a hood over the path of the line guide. While this structure has effectively prevented inadvertent passage of a user's finger between the line guide and one of the side plates, it has created additional production problems. The hood represents an additional cost which must be passed on to the consumer and complicates manufacture of the reel. Further, the hood is an obtrusive addition to the reel that makes it difficult to thread line through the line guide.